What is real

[Guest guest]

Dear Group,

 

I have not been following the dialog on Reality in this group, but

looking to see what is Real ( and "who am I?" ) are certainly a part

of this practice.

 

I study Inquiry and nonduality with Nome at Society of Abidance in

Truth (SAT) in Santa Cruz, CA, USA. www.satraman.org

 

Here is a transcript of a recent dialog I had with Nome at satsang:

 

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Q. is the questioner (me) and N. is Nome:

 

Q: Recently, at satsang you gave me instructions of looking at the

substratum. I have been doing this in the way of inquiring as to what

is always so, what is always free, and what is unchanging? This I

have the most intimate knowledge of. It also turns out this inquiry

is very potent, because it turns out what is always so is what is

always so wherever I am.

 

Listening to your talk this morning gives me still another tool to

use. I am looking to see if there is the sense of separation,

individualization, or what is that. It is clear, when you started

talking about it this morning, that it is just the faintest wisp of

an idea. It seems that there is a sense of time and place for that. I

have a different way of looking at it now. So I feel that I have new

tools to be able to take that inquiry deeper.

 

N: All right. How are you going to approach this "I"? What are you

going to do by way of practice at this point?

 

Q: I see two different ways of looking at the same thing. One is to

continue to look at what is real, what is always so. What is always

so is here now. The stuff that is not it is not what I want to be

looking at. I just want to look as directly to what is so as I am

able and discard everything that is not so. This is one part. The

other part is the ongoing inquiry of, given what is so, "Who Am I?"

 

N: So, the inquiry to find out what is real and the inquiry to find

out "Who am I?", identity and reality are really the same thing.

 

Q: Yes, there were two angles of vision.

 

N: It appears as two angle of vision to the mind.

 

Q.: Yes, yes.

 

N.: But the mind loses itself in either of these angles of vision. We

are dealing with one and the same substance. Called "identity,"

or "reality", it is yourself. When you look at your experience and

you determine that there is the substrate which is present all of the

time and there are other things that are not substrate that come and

go, first you should see it as the substrate. Then, you should see

that it alone is real.

 

If the rope has been mistaken to be the snake, first we see the rope

as the substrate of the snake; the snake is lying on the rope in the

exact same pattern. (Laugh) Then, we want to see that the rope alone

is there, and there has been no snake. It was merely a misperception.

The Existence that you are is the substrate. It never changes. It is

always so. Everything else comes and goes. What is always so alone is

you and alone is real. What is not always so is but an illusion or a

misperception of reality. What is not always so in your own

experience cannot possibly be you, because, when it is not so, you

are still there to know that it is not so. Whatever it is that is

always so in you is so entirely formless. Being always so means that

it is ever existent. It is always real.

 

It is the substrate upon which all unreality seems to come and go. If

it is unreal, does it come and go? Reason takes us this far in the

practice of inquiry, the introspection to know your Self. The real

Self is the substrate upon which the "I" rises. With the rise of "I,"

anything else can raise; with its subsidence, everything else

subsides. The "I" is rising and falling on some substrate. So the "I"

is the temporary, and the substrate, the real Existence, is the

permanent, or abiding, Reality. Can you be two?

 

Q.: Not two.

 

N.: So, then, if you inquire, the secondary "I" is not only seen to

be not the continuing reality, but you see that it is not real at

all. Go on making that inquiry into that very thing which is the

substrate, in a non-objective manner, into yourself, until the very

sense of a second "I," a differentiated thing, is gone. The more you

examine it, the less there is to see of it.

 

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Perhaps this dialog offers some comment on Reality and contributes to

this discussion.

 

Not two,

Richard